Reunion with a stranger
by Servant of Fire
Summary: AU S3: Sherlock returns from hiatus with no memory of John. When the two reunite, now as strangers, it becomes evident that Sherlock is causing his amnesia on purpose. What is his story? Will they be able to piece back together their broken lives?
1. Reunion

**Reunion with a stranger**

What it meant to be a friend had well eluded him a long time ago. Sherlock had returned to England an altered man, a broken man. A man that passed by unannounced. A man forsaken and driven out of the scarce company he had kept, to begin with. A man so ingrained and accustomed to social rejection that he no longer made any attempt to make conversation with anybody.

John knew of course that Sherlock had destroyed himself and everything and become this man for him. So, he followed him one day. Observed anew the man he had befriended once when the sky was clear and it was a different world.

He sits on a sidewalk under a cherry tree. Despite the fact that there are smoking laws in London now, he plays with a cigar, as if he is thinking of lighting it right here. He slides it idly back in his pocket and stares into oblivion. A newspaper is under his arm. Probably looking for work, probably failing to find it. A blossom lights in his hair. Sadness pervades him.

John comes closer now. He even goes so far as to sit on the adjacent bench, on the other side of him, because he cannot bring himself as yet to sit beside him.

"Good morning, Doctor." His baritone rolls from somewhere forgotten. John had known every syllable of it once, but he has long ago put that hopeful memory away. This is not his Sherlock. This is not the world he lived in. John is no longer the man he'd saved.

"Mr. Holmes…" John doesn't know how to address the Sherlock who reportedly has no memory of him.

"Sherlock, if you like." Sherlock gets up, comes around to face him. He sits on the birdbath bench. John looks at his feet. Sherlock tilts his head.

"I do remember you...Or, rather, I remember the idea of you. I hope you know how truly sorry I am that...That I took a piece of you in the process of all of that…"Sherlock's face still lacks emotion, but John can see an undertow of pain.

"No.." John is getting a bit emotional now.

"No, I don't think you should be sorry. It's...You saved my life. For that, I can never repay you." John nodded. Sherlock's face is grave.

"The flat...Where I lived. I don't have a roommate. You...You're welcome to rent with me, sir, should you ever like to look for cheaper living costs. I heard your flat was mostly gone after that last row with those arsonists. My fault possibly. I am the one who had them put away. I'm sorry for that as well. I should like to say I am sorry to you a hundred times a day and it would never be enough. I suppose it's better we've only met this once, then." Sherlock smiled grimly. Nodding, he rose to stand.

"I could...I may like to...Look at the flat." John didn't understand why he'd say that. He remembered living there before. Oh God, how he remembered. That was the first true home John Watson ever had. Sherlock vaguely remembered that he did as well, but he said nothing of the sort.

"If you'd yet like to, then here is a spare key. I'm told it used to belong to you. Funny thing that I'm giving you the key to your old home as if it was a gift." Sherlock passed it on. John let his hand linger near his friend's hand for a long moment. Sherlock looked concerned.

"I...Well, for me. For me, it is a gift. Sherlock...I want you to understand something, please. You see, when...Back then. You and I...We were more than friends." John felt his stomach roll when Sherlock's eyes grew wide with worry.

"Well, no, not like that. I mean, more like brothers. We were practically family once. And so...So, any contact that we can keep between us...Would be flattering for me." John smiled. Sherlock tilted his head backward.

"Mm...They told me you'd say that. They also told me not to come near you. Of course, the key is yours. So, I've just given it to you. Right or wrong. Good day, then, Doctor Watson." Sherlock rose wistfully.

John followed him.

"Sherlock."

So much pain and memory in that one sentence. Sherlock turned around. His cheeks were pinched in an expression that said he'd known him all his life from that single use of his name. Still, the cherry blossoms floated downward in their funeral march to the pavement and clung to them both like tears captured in time, crying for them. They were quiet...So quiet. And still.

"I...I hope so much...So often...that someday I will remember you. And every now and then, you come back. It's not urgent. It's not profound. Things like tea stains left on my research papers. Things like a straight razor instead of an electric one-a gift from your grandfather. I don't suppose you meant to leave it along with my things? A nagging note I find in my rubbish bins...Something...Something like a ghost. Only, I am the one who died, aren't I?" Sherlock nods and looks at the ground.

"I think we both may have died. A very long time ago. A time that died along with us, maybe. I don't know…"John looks off into the air above them. Rain dusts the rooftops beyond this little scene. He hears London go on clipping by around them, humming like a hornet's nest. They were the reason that all of this went to Hell each time.

"Perhaps you should observe me as a stranger then…"Sherlock smiled.

"Oh no...No, I can't do that." John smiled. Sherlock understood. More sadness passed in smiles between them than ever had in tears.

"I suppose there will always be this, then. This detritus of a life half-lived. Cut short by the knives of my captors, by the hollow circumstances of your grief. I can't tell which of us got by worse. To have become strangers, we must have first gone quite mad." Sherlock nodded, perplexed now. No mean feat to render him that way.

"No...Oh, dear, no I don't think. Not half lived...No, you see,...I think you're missing some of the facts. See, we lived. All the way. Possibly far too close and much too fast. Faster than them. We broke the rules and the speed limits of their silly little lives, you and I...And...I suppose...If we crashed and burned in the end. Well, it makes sense. We were always bound to do it that way." John nodded. Sherlock's eyes said he understood.

"You could walk with me a while, then. We talk like strangers, we used to be like brothers. Somewhere in the strange space between those chapters, maybe…" Sherlock raised a brow.

"Maybe we could make it work? We could be...Something else. We could go on haunting a time that doesn't quite belong to us. A place where your blood and my tears could make a loud enough splash to be convincing." John stepped to Sherlock's side and they began walking again.

"Have you ever thought of writing down the things you think? Your words...I don't know why. Something about your mind. You seem to conduct light marvelously in the shadows you cast. There's more to you than could be surmised from passing. Perhaps I can't observe you as a stranger?" Sherlock smiled, looking off into the rain.

"Actually, I used to write your story down. No, I'm not a stranger. More or less, I'm an unfamiliar friend." John smiled upward at him as he stopped to consider that.

"My curse is to have a brilliant mind and still miss the simple beauty that is an enigma I cannot solve." Sherlock shook his head, sighing as he hailed a cab for them. John felt the blood rush to his ears. This was so alien now and yet like all the times before, when they were something...Before…

"If it makes sense, then, what is the point of riddles, Sherlock? Never answer all the questions. That's the meaning of life. It's a game, a dance. It's never over. So you said once when you were you and I was me and Baker Street was home." John smiled as the taxi swung their direction.

Sherlock paused, face suddenly terrified and intrigued all at once.

"Dear God, this is the first and last time we've met, isn't it? Hello! So much to tell you, my stranger, my friend. So much to say if we could remember who we are." Sherlock opened the door to the cab.

John grinned then as it finally dawned on him.

"Hello, then. Let's start with the days that never came, shall we?" They climbed inside the cab to talk about the things that both remembered fondly yet neither quite recalled.


	2. Rescinding, Remembrance

Rescinding, Remembrance

Life resumed. Life had overtaken them. Oft as rain on London's ivory streets, bawdy like pianos for the damned.

John was overwhelmed by it all. Took to drink. Found his silence. He ignored his heart when he longed for conversation. Held his tongue when Sherlock argued with the telly, ignorant that his words were the very script of brilliance. Genius was no longer the prize of a man whom victory had undone.

A violin wept at 3 am. John laid atop the pillows like all those nights before and listened. Before he had groaned, muttered curses at a life that afforded him naught but the irritation of that solemn ill-timed song. Now, whenever the instrument wept, his tears tuned to the same note and trickled to the linens.

Only one night of the fourth or fifth week the song was silent. John sat up. He may have imagined it all. Rather, it could be worse. The favor of fate may have rescinded. His bird had flown his cage. Oh, and if he had how hollow rang the home no longer Doctor Watson's to be had.

John ran down the stairs. His heart begged as it beat his bones, rattling the rack of his ribs rife with random thoughts. He fled into the rain. It soaked him straight through a running suit he'd worn to bed.

There in an alley, the rain came down like God's own chandelier. Shattering, shrieking like bats tripping over Cinderella's slippers before they slipped into their graves. John froze. His blood had turned to lightning and ice.

Sherlock stood in the rain. He was dressed fully, for he never really slept. He was a ghost in the rain, coat soaked, hair a stream of ink over paper skin. He was a news bulletin, shoulders arched in the stigma of questions the times demanded. His eyes were ghosts and the rain a halo as it clung to summer's heat and steamed from his shoulders. He was an angel and the devil all at once in that starless night of sheeting rain and sleepless streets.

John held his breath. The rain was quiet for a moment. Time was hailed like a taxi and the streets stopped for its approach. John's heart nearly burst with the moment he waited for Time to catch him in its jaws. The moment Sherlock would speak to him again, for the first time in days.

"London...godless...Damn this place." Sherlock chuckled and turned, wet hair streaking in his wild, sad eyes. John drew nearer.

"What are you doing out here?" John paused. Sherlock's bottom lip quivered.

"I know that I know you. As in intellectually, I know that. I found you a stranger when first we moved here...We left off a life that felt unfitting, sort of all too normal and old like a bad broken shoe and yet out of the body like going mad. And I thought….I thought I could live that way. Until, of course, I knew you. It was your presence-Suddenly I became, human again. An instant. A moment of sheer precipice. A fall…"Sherlock swallowed. His eyes said he'd lost his mind but the smile on his face said he'd found it. John wasn't sure which would hurt the worse.

"You were sleepwalking, were you? A bit of a bad place to be doing that, mate." John nodded toward the flat. They should go home. The streets were colder than they'd been before.

"More I was walking to find sleep. It often eludes me." Sherlock smiled. He shook his wet hair from his eyes. He stepped closer.

"It's only at night I come alive, you see. At night, when I am alone. I thought alone protected me, but really it's more my character defect, my default setting that turns my consciousness to maximum output. I understand it and it understands me. No love for it is ever lost or won. I don't suppose that makes even a bit of sense, does it, Doctor Watson?" Sherlock stuck his hands in his coat pockets.

"John, if you like." John took a step nearer, evading the rain's remnant as it rolled off the roof.

"You'll never put me back together, John. A man of moral fiber like you will try, I assume. I find that amiable. Still, it puzzles me." Sherlock nodded, looking at his reflection in a puddle. John followed his disdainful gaze.

"If you truly remembered me, like you say you know me, then you wouldn't question that. It wouldn't come as amiable. It would show how purely selfish I am. I couldn't let go of you. Not even when you aren't really the man you were." John laughed bitterly. Sherlock looked up.

"No, but that isn't all bad now, is it? I wasn't a man. I was a machine at best. Somehow you cut the strings that held the puppet to his task. If anyone ever saw manhood and purpose in the fragments that made my person, it was you, John. Always the good Doctor Watson to see through the decay of android intellect." Sherlock nodded and looked at his hands as they filled with rain.

"Whatever made you find a man out of it all anyway if I might ask? What was it about me that you were drawn to? If only I could remember, I suppose I could resume some of my humanity. I am quite mad you know. I am only growing worse. It's cold." Sherlock shuddered. John swallowed and pressed his flattened palm to his chest.

"A conversation with a mind like yours? Sharp like steel but a fine-toothed comb as ever it was. I couldn't find any harm in that. It was more than a man, though, wasn't it? It was the best, the brightest that I ever knew. If you asked me to explain it, really I can't. I can only say that there were things about you-the music at 3 in the morning. For Christ's sake, the music!" John was in tears. Sherlock stared at him in awe.

"Could I ask you something? It isn't fair-not after all I've done to you. Years of Hell and what not. Still, a favor. I need something from you I can't ask of anyone else." Sherlock grimaced. Whatever he meant to ask, he was dehumanized by the thought of it.

"Anything. After all that you've done for me. Remind yourself. For me. Death. It was death to you, even if the body remained alive." John drew a deep huffing breath. Sherlock's cheeks were wine-stained now with shame and worry. He sucked his teeth.

"Might I ask you to remind me who I am? Maybe we could talk and not merely speak in passing. I am absolute rubbish at human exchanges. I hate to make a psychiatrist of your medical expertise, but I see you keep a journal. Maybe if you could map my thoughts, I would find them again someday. Find you in the mix of all of it. It's alphabet soup at best at worst it's a mad man's herald. I'm losing my grip-I can't…"Sherlock opened his hands and closed his fists, shaking his head in desperation.

"Is that all?"John was amazed. This the only returning favor he'd request?

"Isn't that enough?" Sherlock's eyes widened in shame. John took his wrist. The simple seizing motion made Sherlock leap in his skin like a spirit had been evicted. John smiled. That contact. That grounding action. They were quiet.

"You know? I would have gladly given you blood or something animated with real price. The story of your life is just one of the finer things I have in my collection of human experiences." John smiled. Sherlock was confused again.

"Sherlock, don't worry so much. You're not as lost as you think. Come on…"John led his dear friend back into the flat. Sitting him on the settee, he made them each a cup of tea and pulled out a massive ledger of notes.

"Once upon a time, in a godless slice of England there lived the best and brightest man. I buried him. That's how the life became a legend. Oh, but I knew the man. Will I liken him to a day I can't remember without breaking, a polished stone that bears his name?My best friend…Whose death was loud as silence and storied all my years. " John opened the book. Sherlock folded his knees under his chin and folded his hands as if in prayer. That was how they chose to begin the retelling of a story they both should know by broken heart had blood not blurred the passages.


	3. Lost, Not Lost

**Lost, Not Lost**

The panic that filled him when the case went wrong. The regret when he hadn't gone with him. Sherlock and John may be on first name basis now. They may be talking as if they were friendly roommates. Progress essentially but they were not yet back to being the brotherly life companions they had been.

John wandered London in an impossible, drowning silence. No news anchor would cover the disappearance of Sherlock Holmes, because he was supposed to be dead anyway. Scotland Yard had opted out of this one, saying that any strange behavior from Sherlock would permanently be chalked up as the "St. Bart's Pretext". Not their division.

Mycroft's people wanted little to do with this either. That's when John became truly afraid. He heard the chatter between them. Mycroft's heated argument with Mrs. Hudson, who had been the last to see Sherlock alive-in the market of all places! Missing persons flyers taped to every wall of Mycroft's many dwellings-and none of them Sherlock's face.

Finally, in desperation, John confronted the other Holmes.

"Why aren't you looking for him? He's your brother!" John's fingers knotted in his own coat, trying to hold himself back from kicking the twice-bereft sibling in his teeth. Mycroft lifted his chin.

"Because he isn't lost. He disappeared on purpose. To protect them. I thought I might seek them first to find him. Quite the humanitarian, that one. You should know, he saved your life on pain of his own death. Too many times for my constitution, I fear." Mycroft nodded to the wall behind him.

John's jaw dropped. Mycroft smiled.

"Truly, he has become a stranger. To you and I both. Maybe you should be the one to find him on the field. Know who he is when we're not watching. Find how he lives now...Seek that life for all its flaws. All of that, Doctor Watson, is a great mystery I am incapable of deducing myself. Call it the consequence of ice robbed of its equal fire." Mycroft twirled a pocket watch Sherlock had given him for emphasis. John understood, feeling his heart sink to his stomach.

"My name is John." John looked up. It was a simple statement. Not an edge of aggression in it. Mycroft raised a brow.

"Call me by my name, please. That's the first step toward being more human. The only fault in your stars...Yours and Sherlock's minds, I mean. They're all fire and ice...And pain. Acute, indescribable. And left untreated...Well, it will ruin you. It will ruin the brilliant edge. It will break it apart and root-rot the rest, til rust over takes the face you're so hellbent on saving." John saw himself out leaving Mycroft eviscerated by his words. Only because all of them were true.


	4. Happy Accidents

**Happy accidents**

Finding out why was harder than knowing how. Right or wrong, Sherlock had made a call that may alter his life forever. Could John live with himself, with the guilt that he hadn't been able to save him?

He'd found him. John had been wandering in complete despair down the Thames. The starlight had gotten him totally lost in the mystery of life. Being lost, he found him, perched like an eagle on a stone.

"Good evening."

It was this sentence...The complete lack of familiarity in it, even after they'd been progressing, that told John something was wrong.

"Hello, Sherlock." John smiled, pretending that all was as it should be. He swallowed his leaping heart when he saw the little glass vial twirling between Sherlock's fingers. Whatever he'd taken, that was the culprit. There was the memory thief, the destroyer of dreams.

"Who?" Sherlock looked up. John felt his face draining of blood. It was not the cool blanching of horrors he'd known before. It was as if his own soul became his vampire and leeched him dry.

"Oh, I meant you. That's your name, isn't it?" John smiled or attempted to. His lips went up more so in a question, a grimace of concern. Sherlock studied him carefully.

"I...I can't say for certain. Suppose that makes conversation a problem, doesn't it?" Sherlock nodded and pointed at John.

"You are a doctor. An army medic. You were invalided from Afghanistan or Iraq not more than 5 years ago." Sherlock smiled. He mistook the look on John's face for shock rather than sickness.

"It's what I do, I think. Not certain about that either...You see, I drank this. I confess to doing it. It's...It's a serum. It suppresses the neurons that stimulate associative memories. The user develops dissociative behaviors, but they remember basic motor function. It's the perfect poison when the intended victim is brewing conspiracy. I trade in it often, buying and selling. To protect a secret I'm sure. The trouble is I don't remember whose. It's a troubling thing. I trust you, but I have no idea why…"Sherlock tilted his head. John nodded, understanding now. He struggled to talk and made a strangulated sound deep in his throat. Sherlock's eyes widened.

"My God...You know me, don't you?" Sherlock's closing fist broke the vial. It snapped up and cut his wrist. Blood trickled from the side of his hand. It had barely missed his vein. The blood streamed down his arm and he barely even noticed it until it came down to his fingers. These he dangled like a kitten's paw raveled in a wad of string. John hissed and leaned forward. He pulled plasters from his pockets and began to work.

"Right on all counts. Yes, I am...I was...your best mate." John grinned. Sherlock's eyes were bright in the starlight, filled with fear.

"I should be sorry, I think. This...It's a bit not good, isn't it? What I've done to you…" Sherlock's face crumpled, suddenly sick from loss of blood.

"Oh, no. Shh...Let's not apologize. At least now I know why you don't know me. You haven't for a while, you know." John held his breath. The plasters were soaking purple. Sherlock stared at John in awe, the blood draining all the color from him.

"You...There's so much more to the story, I take it. I am under the impression that I must not be a very good man. You-It seems as I have wronged you, many times. You carry that with you in the slouch of your back, your shaking albeit professional hands and-"Sherlock's eyes went wide when John pressed his palm over his lips.

"Shh...Not another word. You're going to black out if you keep it up. No, to answer truthfully, you were not a good man. You were a great man. The best I ever met. You sacrificed your life for me. I feel that you may still be doing so. That is the slouch and the shaking. That is the fracture that broke me to the core. A very human problem, my friend." John finally suppressed the bleeding. Sherlock stared at him, barely animated now save for his wide and wondering eyes.

"What sort of man you must have been...Someone like me...Someone like me inspired so much to do something like that. It doesn't add up quite, does it? Unless you were someone stellar. A brilliant furnace in a world of dark. It must have been good the warmth of that light." Sherlock smiled, instantly fond of this stranger. John coughed.

"I was quite dead when you came along and stirred the sparks back to living. I owe you more than you'd think. You always were too critical, especially of yourself." John eases himself to sitting on a log near Sherlock. The Thames splashed over a surge of rubbish in the background. A riverboat made some obnoxious sound that broke their concentration. Sherlock studied it, spacing out again for a moment.

"It isn't all bad, is it? Despite consequences...Choice. Moral agency. The right to life...To lose it. I think it must have been something hopeful. A feeling of invincible odds. To have known you must have been a bit like having a sound and stable mind." Sherlock turned to look at John. John swallowed, unable to speak. Sherlock's monologue continued, out of the mind and floating above the body.

"There are things I shouldn't know. So, now I don't. I wiped my mind of them, you see. More thoroughly than any technique ever could. They were all glass houses. The living and the dead were there together, all made of ice and fire and things that can't be contained. It was all too much, the weight of those souls. Of human lives that I might have broken if I placed my all too well-meaning hands on the strings. The orchestra wasn't mine…." Sherlock swallowed as tears colored his eyes.

"You should tell that to your music." John felt a lump in his throat. Sherlock looked at the water. Again at the stars. He sighed.

"I've thought that dying...What it might be like. It seemed it would be empty, like the end of a road less traveled. I thought that maybe living was important. That I could be useful still in some small attraction to the human purpose. And yet…" Sherlock drew a breath. He coughed. His face was glass and the stoicism was shattering. John felt the last pieces of himself crashing to a final break right along with him.

"Everything I was is going away! It happens in moments and then in hours. Days and weeks. They fall away like decades and I am lost. So lost…" Sherlock looked at John. He smiled, to retain some sense of his control. Yet he was breaking up like ice over waters. John nodded.

"Maybe not as lost as you think? You know...I know who you are. Even if you don't remember. I could help you. A life for a life...A choice for a choice." John gulped. Sherlock stared at him.

"I know who you are...Where you live. What you do when you think I'm not watching. The sadness. The agony, really. I know all the places you left your mind. I've been searching for what seems like forever. I found you out and then I found you. All on accident, in the end." John laughed. It was a crack of odd sound in a moment of enduring silence. Sherlock nodded.

"Seems like I was more of a fond accident to you than I ever was a human encounter. Do you ever feel? Do you ever feel that happy accidents, those existential mistakes... That you didn't want them? Maybe had you not been where you were whenever we found each other, your life would now be different. There wouldn't be the danger that conducted all this madness, and all these wide-eyed fears. Maybe you could be peaceful, and find a life of paced contingencies. A place of many numbers, where the choices were all your own. Maybe then there would be no baggage. And none of the agony that colors whatever the relationship was between us." Sherlock sucked his teeth. John stood up, slapped his thighs.

"If I had the choice, between a life of perfect options or all the little crises that made us who we are? Those crises are gold, Sherlock. All those happy accidents are the treasures that made for memory, for the science of story. That's not something you trade for variables." John held out his hand. Sherlock stared at it, frightened.

"I want you to come home. Be my disaster. It would mean the world to me."

Sherlock let a gasping breath before he took John's hand.

"If you live to regret this, I hope that you'll at least be living well." Sherlock stood with John who took his shoulders.

"Oh God, yes. Yes, I will."


	5. Bulletproof

**Bulletproof:**

This was not panic. This was fear. Raw. Patented. Immaterial. Like jets shooting out of his blood's every cell. Vicious too. He felt the back of his neck and head burning like he'd been hit with a crowbar.

"John? It's...If you can't, you know, I'll call in someone." Greg Lestrade was there at the scene. Sherlock had been found. He'd been working a case. One of the ones that were more obscure, ordered by Mycroft. Some of the business he'd gone away for. None of John's business now that he was a stranger, so Sherlock hadn't invited him. It was only that Greg happened upon him in the Subway tunnels. He'd been chained, arms over his head, to the tunnel roof. He'd been tortured. It was a little bit too graphic to say how. The smell of his burnt clothes still hung in the air. The iconic coat was gone in the act. Sherlock was mostly gone with it too.

"N-no. I was his best friend. I think I should be his attending physician." John nodded. Greg was right to call him here.

Sherlock's chains were lowered. His eyes came open. The rescue crew handed him to John.

Holding Sherlock like a child, John was amazed by the look of calm in his friend's eyes. Then, he had a sick feeling that this was a familiar story. John felt like may cry. Still, he needed that stiff British upper lip. Sherlock didn't know him. He'd be so disturbed.

"I-I told them...that I would be alright. No need to trouble yourself, Doctor...Doctor Watson, is it?" Sherlock sputtered as John eased him to sitting on one of the emergency gurney's presented.

"Ah, well. Let's have a look since I came this way, eh?" John swallowed. Sherlock's hands went up, despite that these were mutilated. He opened his blazer.

"I was shot. Here and here. Small caliber bullets. I think they may still be in there." Sherlock's voice was so calm even hampered with pain. That was when John understood the reason for his serum addiction.

"I'm sorry if this...If this will be uncomfortable for you, but I'm going to have to remove the majority of your clothes. They were burned, mind you." John was stating the obvious. Sherlock laughed peevishly and nodded.

"Oh quite. They tossed several barrels of oil on my person. It was not the fuel grade kind, something made for Chinese new years lamps, they said. It smelled like jasmine when it burned, a dark green. All quite lovely, really. I was almost sorry to see the flame go out." Sherlock sniffs. John closes his eyes. He's angry, with Sherlock for being so comfortable now. It meant that he was broken on every beat. In every corner of his soul. It was something John would wring from him if only he could. _Stupid bloody machine! God love you…_

Cutting his clothes off, he found the story of all the horrors. Sherlock was completely placid, like a lamb at the slaughterhouse. Greg had to excuse himself. John heard him vomiting in a rubbish bin. For Sherlock's recent torture was just ink stamped across old news. His body had scar after scar after repetitious scar.

"Tedious, aren't they? It's difficult to find a vein with all the viney scars mapping over them. Boring...And not really boring. It would be the pathologist's dream study. What kills the man but keeps the machine of his cognitive processes alive? They could use it in intelligence. The threat of this death...Weight of this captivity. I hope you will keep it our secret. This is a terrible art form. It should not fall into hands on either side of the law." Sherlock smiled, smile knitting white as John laid his face in Sherlock's bloody hands. This was all too much, even for the field surgeon of Afghanistan. Sherlock's bare-skinned truth was all too educational and John's every fiber wanted to undo it.

"Are you...Will you be alright, Doctor Watson?" Sherlock tapped his better fingers against John's face. John lifted his head, swallowing his silent tears.

"Please, my name is John." John smiled and laid a hand on Sherlock's head, suppressing his wild hair. Sherlock nodded, face still a palored mask of unfamiliarity.

"And, you sir, are bordering on bulletproof. This is...Despite its complete lack of civility, utterly wizard. It tells the story of a man willing to damn himself for his friends and colleagues. Quite lovely, if you'll forgive me for the expression." John traced a hand over Sherlock's carved chest, careful not to break open new lacerations. Sherlock watched John's fingers, teeth cringed in pained amazement. Greg crept closer, curiosity pricked by what John had said.

"I vow on pain of death to keep it a secret. You have my word as a physician." John crossed Sherlock's heart and made a cutting motion with his index finger across his own throat.

Sherlock's face was, for the first time, transparently emotional. He was horrified, dismayed even, but also flattered that John found his torment lovely. Because it meant that he had been the first accepting person of Sherlock as pariah. No one dared come near this man for fear of the knife he'd been under. Now John was intrigued by the incisions, understanding the genius of his life on the table? It was all too much. Sherlock's ice blue eyes looked down at his bloody hands. His lips fluttered as if to ask a question. He had no words for what his heart wished to ask.

John may never have the heart to tell Sherlock that he was the man that all this cruel artistry was for.

"Let's get this cleaned up, then?" John set to working on Sherlock who kept his head turned downward. He chanced a cautious glance at Greg who was emotional, having learned some time ago that Sherlock didn't know who he was.

"It's quite alright, Detective Holmes. I won't tell anyone either, now will I?" Greg winked and patted Sherlock's hand. He gave him the fondest smile that he could through his next of tears expression. Then he turned on his heel and marched off.

"I gather that I may be bulletproof but all of you are glass. I'm sociopathic perhaps, but not blind. Not a fool...You and the Inspector...Were familiar with me...Before?" Sherlock looked up at John, who swallowed and took him by his chin.

"Let's just say we are the reason for this artwork. You, yes we knew you. We loved you. Apparently, you loved us. You were our dearest friend. A little brother, on all counts, Mr. Holmes." John called him that on purpose to see what he would say.

"Oh, it's...It's Sherlock if you like." Sherlock smiled. He looked away smiling, lost in thought. He was truly happy too. Almost jovial even. That was the most frightening thing about this day of all, as far as John was concerned. He mopped the blood off of him and helped him dress in some of his own clothes that John had in a book bag. Then they took the cab home.

"Oh, is this your flat? It's kind of you to bring me here." Sherlock pointed up at 221 B. He leaned over to look at it, eyes glowing with admiration in the street lamp light. John smiled and laid a hand on his subconsciously trembling shoulder.

"It's our flat actually. We've shared rent on this place for years. Come on then." John helped Sherlock to the steps. Sherlock swallowed and looked at John in amazement.

"Well now, this is puzzling. We keep meeting over and over again. It's the first acquaintance every time and somehow every time we keep living here together. This place...It must be impervious to our damage, our ground control or whatever." Sherlock looked up at it, almost afraid now.

"Call it what you like. It will always be your home if you want it to be." John felt his heart drop to his feet as Sherlock nodded, unsure.

"Hmm...Home...Home, okay. Let's see what that's like."


	6. When Death Had Made a Tender World

**When Death Had Made a Tender World**

It was 3 in the morning when John was called to Scotland Yard. A week since Sherlock had been retrieved from the missing person's list. John was as stunned to receive the call as he was to learn the nature of it.

"There's been a find. Mycroft, he found a video journal in the things Sherlock was recovered in our mission from." Greg's voice was cut off as John slipped out of the flat. He cast a glance over his shoulder on the way out. One last sad glance at Sherlock as he swayed in the night with his violin, humming along with the tune that wept from him like magic's own blood.

When John arrived, they dispensed with small talk. Everything and everyone in the room was highly compressed. Ready to burst with horror. The others had discovered the thing to be a video message. One that they had already viewed, to their deep dismay.

"It appears that you are the only one who can solve this video message. So, I know it will be hard for you, but I want you to be the one to watch." Greg sat with John near a projector in the Yard's break room. Mycroft stood nearest the door, white knuckling an umbrella.

"I'll make you some tea." Sally's offer came as a serious shock. This meant that she had seen the video and it had humbled her. John nodded.

"Of course. He's- He was my friend too. It's the least I could do for him if what you say is…"John couldn't finish. Knowing that Sherlock had died for him was a lot different than having believed he'd killed himself.

The screen went dark and then it flickered on to picture. The first sound was gunshots on a street in what looked to be Kabul. John swallowed. John would recognize that god-forsaken place anywhere.

Sherlock suddenly came into view. He was dressed in black military stealth ops uniform something that made John's gut drop to his feet. Sherlock huffed and shook his sweaty hair out of his eyes.

"The hour is 2 hundred local. There's been a breach… Two hours ago. Midnight. Near the front." He nodded to someone off camera and turned to the camera. Finally, he huffed and smiled.

"This message goes out to the team at MI6, my brother, and a very dear friend of mine that, if he should receive this message, he alone will understand the code encrypted in it. I will not say your name…"Sherlock's stern expression wavered. John realized then that Sherlock's intense stoicism may have been based heavily on his act. Perhaps he was more somber than he was arrogant after all.

"If you are receiving this message, it means that I am dead. Officially and without tricks. Or…"Sherlock laughed. He suddenly got a bit nervous and pulled a cigarillo out of his pocket. He paused to light it and looked over his shoulder. Mycroft realized then that the camera was set on a little tripod. John was too horrified by the fact that Sherlock was so uncharacteristically distressed.

"Or it means worse. _So_ much worse. I pray for your sakes that this message finds me dead. I may not have the strength to resist talking this time. They've finished it, Myc." Sherlock forgot he was talking to a camera. John absently looked at Mycroft who was actually near tears. Greg's muffled _oh my God_ and Sally's little whimper is what brought them back. Sherlock had flinched and looked over his shoulder. An intense firefight broke out near him. He shook his head and swallowed, closing his eyes, smoking deep and composing himself.

"They have finished the serum. Moriarty's super drug. The one that will make the opiate crisis seem like a holiday candy exchange." Sherlock studied the camera, eyes filled with sadness.

"You know more than you'd like to, friend. The key to the rest of the puzzle is with Charlotte." Sherlock smiled. Then John realized why the sorrow in his eyes. This part of the video diary was directed toward him.

Sherlock nodded and his eyes went wide. The cigar was blown out as a helicopter took off over his head. He dropped the butt and nodded, looking back in the camera as it got quiet again. He was resolved as if this was the every second thought and also the last available option.

"The hour has gotten late again...This is the only way." Sherlock opened his shirt to reveal a clear vial of liquid. He nodded and smiled.

"This serum was tested in the same lab. It is the drug that can suppress neurons stimulating memory." Sherlock raised his head. His eyes were posed with needling pain. He shuddered, truly terrified now. Shouts sounded in the background. Shouts in a language John understood from living in Afghanistan a sight too long. John flinched visibly to the others but refused to believe what he'd heard. What they'd planned to do to his friend.

"They are coming for me. It's not death. What a tender world that would have been...that death could find me first." Sherlock laughed. He smiled.

"You...Some of you are very dear friends. All of your are brothers in arms. Now, I will forget you all. I will be dead to you in all those ways that are important. But know that the truths that I have uncovered rest with Charlotte. The rest will die with me." Sherlock's eyes went wide again. They were near to finding him. Completely out of his character, his jaw dropped, his lips were blue as he panted, knowing at this moment what they would do to him and why.

He labored for air, like a fish on pavements, a portrait of terror. His hair slicked wet with sweat and wilted around his face. He cast as destruction. Harvests when they die. A world destroyed.

He turned to the camera, a sick smile rolling around the frightened, parched in parting lips. He nodded.

"This is the end. God save you." He broke the vial and drank it. Just then his eyes rolled in his head. When they opened, they were an odd off-color, filled with film. His lips began to foam like a rabid dog and he thrashed hands going to his throat. The camera was knocked over by his thrashing legs.

Then his captors came. John stood up hearing their words in English now. English enunciated them to his ear. They meant more in his native tongue than they did in the obscure dialect.

"Did you hope you would die? Oh, wouldn't that have been sweet...No, you will not die. Not until you have tasted every poison we have ever mixed." The captors picked Sherlock up, hands and feet. Sherlock screamed in pain and thrashed as he was carried away.

The camera was knocked away and a teenage boy picked it up. He leaned into the camera and whispered.

 _This belongs to the Englishman...A life's work for a life._ The boy said in the foreign tongue, but John understood.

As the camera went black, all eyes turned to John. John coughed, emotional now, even though he knew Sherlock was currently safe and sound at home.

"Charlotte...Is the name of the skull Sherlock keeps on the mantle. He named her that. I haven't the foggiest why. Only I would know that because only I lived with him in his last years." John felt that Sherlock had died in every way that mattered. And so, he referred to him as if he was dead.

"Doctor Watson, it's time for you to search your flat for the secret Sherlock hid with the skull then...Perhaps the dead thing will render life this time." Mycroft's crisp attention shook the room. John stood slowly, feeling his spirit race and shriek in terror ahead of his body. He nodded, saluted, dead to himself and rights and human sense of emotion.


	7. Capax Dei

**Capax Dei**

John trudged up the stairs. He was halfway ascended when Mrs. Hudson came crying at the landing.

"Oh, I wouldn't go too much further, John. He isn't...He's...slipping away from us. And-"Mrs. Hudson dabbed mascara dyed tears in a hankie. John saw her face lit up in the dim light of the kitchen. He descended to her. Took her shoulders.

"Do you believe...that the layers of man are deeper than what he remembers? And if so...do you think? I mean, honestly, do you really think that he...Well, that's he still there? And that...If we talk to that part of him…?" John swallowed. Mrs. Hudson smiled, through tears.

"I gave him tea. I thought he could settle he was...Talking to himself and to his ghosts. He used to do that, you know. Talk to ghosts. When he was younger and half out of his mind. Really...Maybe it was only you who could save him. Oh, dear. If I hadn't fussed over him, I'd not have set him off…"Mrs. Hudson whimpered as she retreated bird-like into the kitchen again.

John ascended in silence. He heard the soft muttering echo off the wall.

"Had I been more clever...Well, I'd have solved it. I'd have solved the final problem now…" Sherlock's dark chuckling was frightening. John held his breath. He smelled cigarettes.

Tear-filled his eyes as something that used to seem such a large issue between them became such a trifle. John crept into the room.

Sherlock sat on the floor, legs folded cat-like. A cigarette bobbed between his teeth. He had Charlotte the skull sitting near his feet. And all around and between them were broken teacups. Teacups shattered spilling the aromatic Earl Grey in a ring around them. Cigarette ashes clung to the graveyard of the teacups, sprinkling the pieces of their ruin with newspaper confetti. It was all cheap and pointless.

"And you know, had I solved it...My problem. Problem of the problems...Then I'd not be here. No, I'd be home. Not in the tunnels of Bucharest, no...No, those lads were kind to share their knowledge of underbelly cities and all that rot, but...No, home...Home, I think, is England. Haven't you wanted to see it? To know what it would be like to have topography to go with the carefully bred accent that ever gives us away?" Sherlock laughed, smiling with a ruthless angle to his teeth. John held his breath. Sherlock blinked. He had heard him enter.

"Someone's here to search the prison yard. To look for contraband...Find clues...Seek and see what it is the great consulting detective hides...But I forgot all the rest. I forgot it. Decidedly. After many confessions. You know I reached the full sum of sanctity in that one moment of priestly rapture. My Capax Dei as it were…" Sherlock set Charlotte in his lap and laid his hand on top of "her".

John knelt beside him. The fact that Sherlock was having a familiar conversation with a skull but could not so much as look at him was unsettling. What was coming out of his mouth was worse.

"They'll search you know. They'll be looking for the diary I made on videos. All the little...pieces...of what I was. I heard them talking over the phone. I heard them over the music...That's a new one. The music. It's like...sort of like a waltz to the voices. I didn't use to hear voices with the music before." Sherlock shuddered and rubbed his arms. Several shards of teacup rolled out of his sleeves and clattered against the others.

"What do they tell you?" John interjected. Sherlock's misty eyes floated to meet his.

"They tell me that...Common sense...will break you in the end." Sherlock leaned his head to the side, studying John like only he could. He reached out a hand and seized John's jumper in a fierce grip. John gulped and held Sherlock's wrist as tears rolled ever so softly down his marble face.

"They say that holiness...Oh,that angels would! That serving on their side. All a process of vanity. Of desperation. And yet the game….Always the game! It's never over!" Sherlock was crying. John was trying to process it because even in breaking he was so eerily calm.

"Do you want it to be?" John swallowed to hide the crack in his voice. Sherlock's jaw dropped.

"No! And...And yes." Sherlock peered suddenly intensely into John's eyes. He leaned closer.

"Sometimes...I can't feel my place in gravity." Sherlock's teeth grit as he realized the horror of his words.

"I think...and it doesn't make a difference. I'm falling...And it happens so slowly...so slowly that…"Sherlock laid a hand on John's face, eyes darting over every detail.

"John?" That voice was recognition. All of the recognition from years before. He wasn't on anything, as John had previously presumed. He was coming down from the use.

"I'm here." John knew he was crying now too, but he could still be calm. He took Sherlock's wrists in his hands now, holding his breath as Sherlock tried to make sense of that.

"No...No, I can't...I can't allow myself to know...To remember." Sherlock scrambled, writhed against John's wrists. John held tighter.

"Addiction to forgetfulness cannot bring you peace…" John nodded and leaned their foreheads together.

"It's not...It isn't peace I'm looking for. It's you." Sherlock bit his bottom lip.

"Now you're not making sense!" John tried to keep the bite out of his tone.

"No, you don't understand! If I remember, then I'll talk. And I'll tell them...I can't. No one can know about you...You were my reason." Sherlock was quaking.

"You're not there anymore. You're home now. With me...and Mrs. Hudson. And that could be okay. Mm? We could fix this." John tried to keep Sherlock still.

"You...See, that's what made you worth saving, wasn't it? Because you think if you believe it doesn't matter if it's true or not-oh but by God, if you do, if _you_ believe! Then a person can be saved…"Sherlock laughed wetly shaking so hard now he was rattling the teacups. Charlotte rolled away. The USB drive that had his secrets hidden in it popped out of her teeth. John saw it out of the corner of his eye, stomach rolling.

John took Sherlock by his hysterically hitching shoulders. He swallowed and pulled his coat off, wrapping it around his friend. Sherlock stammered. John shook his head.

"No...No, you...You need to stop. Be quiet. Allow yourself to let go long enough to not be okay and that be fine." John tried to smile.

"Letting go is falling...I'm afraid of that." Sherlock huffed out a breath that sounded like years of exhaustion.

"I'll catch you this time?" John nodded. Sherlock was panting. He looked over his shoulder.

"Dear God! You're not even supposed to be here! They'll come back, you know. They always come back….They come with their talks and their knives and their guns...Bullets, bandages...Blasphemies. They have so many tricks. So many traps. So many stages to set the mind, to rig the motions of my thoughts. They could have done anything, anything to me...And I would have been fine. But my mind...I couldn't afford a life without it. I needed it. It was my only sense of security...The only source of strength. I am nothing without the clarity of reason...And I am beyond reason now…" Sherlock was chewing his nails to the bloody quick. John pried his hands from his mouth.

"You are my friend. That is something...More than thought. Something that doesn't need reasoning, huh? Stop it, please." John held Sherlock's hands as they twisted and clenched, as he tried to chew his fingers down again.

"You don't understand...I am completely devalued without the pace of thought. I can't...I can't afford madness. It's a luxury for some. For me...I can't. It isn't rational, that's its crux, isn't it? There's no way I can fulfill my earthly function if I am breaking up like...When they come back and they always come back...It'll all be like this...Like this…"Sherlock kicked the teacups sending the rest of them smashing around the room.

John knelt and picked Sherlock up like a groom would a bride. It was a weird way to carry him, but he was quaking now. Only now did John realize that Sherlock was 15 pounds or so lighter than he'd been when he'd known him which was saying a lot. Swallowing, he hauled him to the settee and they collapsed there.

"Myc wants to know what the video diary puzzle was…" John holds up the USB that fell out of Charlotte's mouth. Sherlock stares at the roof.

"Let him have it then. He can pick up the investigation. I'm dead and done anyway...All of it so pointless." Sherlock's voice was like a petulant child. John wrapped an arm around him.

"It doesn't have to be like that…" John looked down at Sherlock. Sherlock's hands were shaking.

"The serum...I'll get more. I am addicted to forgetting, John." Sherlock looked up innocently. For a moment, John was frightened by this broken child in his arms. This was such an unnatural position of the vulnerable. Knowing none of the acts committed against his friend, John understood his torment in full. And he cried. God help him, he was crying like a child himself. All of it so wrong.

"You haven't forgotten now?" John ran his hand over Sherlock's hair. Sherlock's brows wrinkled.

"I told you that you may live to regret this…" Sherlock nodded.

"It's not the only time you've been wrong." John kept his hand near Sherlock's hair. Sherlock looked up again.

"My only friend...And I'm doing this to you. It's all a dance of fire, forcing the forgetting. Swallowing the tears." Sherlock laid a palm on John's chest. John nodded.

"Well, you always did keep me on my feet, if you recall." John folded Sherlock's legs up and pulled him all the way to his chest, holding him crumpled like a cheap suit in his own trembling arms.

"Come tomorrow you'll forget. Again...The search to find who you are will begin all over. And I will be here then as I am now. No less your friend, although entirely less acquainted. You will still be the man I knew to be the greatest of them then, broken mind and all. I could cut myself for decades on the jagged pieces, but I'd never assemble the puzzle again. You'll have to do so yourself, won't you? It's not fair. But you can...I anyone can, then I know…" John laughed bitterly and leaned his face into Sherlock's hair, sniffling sadly at the scent of the tea where it splashed up and baptized him.

"I know you can! And you don't know it, and you hate not knowing. But it's okay...I promise you, the sun also rises...And it's really okay." John shook his head, listening to his own teeth chatter and the clock tick until Sherlock Holmes was fast asleep.


	8. Goodwill

**Goodwill**

The signs had been there for months. Sherlock, separated from John in spirit now, had thrown himself into his work more aggressively than he had ever done. John found the vials one night and wept. Sherlock had taken a triple dose of the memory suppressor once this case got underway. Whatever it was, he wanted John to be no part of it.

"Are you sure you won't eat? I could pick you up something when I go out." John tried to keep the warble out of his voice. It wasn't that Sherlock was deranged, but repeated use of the serum was altering his previously eccentric behavior. He was now extremely withdrawn and startled at human speech directed at him outside of interactions related to his case.

"Beg pardon?" Sherlock tilted his head. John saw it again. His eyes darting over him trying to deductively reason who he was. John coughed.

"It's just that...You haven't eaten in over a week." John knotted his fists in his sweater. Sherlock nodded.

"And you know this because we live here together. Pardon, Doctor. I forget sometimes who the other tenants are. You and a lady, the um...not-housekeeper...correct?" Sherlock smiled, and pleasantly so. John's heart was weeping, but his face smiled in return.

"Yes, that's right." John nodded. Sherlock came closer to him, straightening his blazer jacket as if about to address a client.

"And you...You were asking me? I'm sorry. I was distracted, sir." Sherlock cleared his throat. John internally flinched at _sir_.

"I was asking if you wanted anything at the market? I haven't noticed you eating at all. We share a refrigerator and...Your side... Well, it's empty. But you...you haven't been eating anything? I've been monitoring your nutrition a bit. It's something doctors do as a habit and..." John cringed. Sherlock's face was so utterly rife with confusion.

"Oh, yes, right…" Sherlock's brows knit.

"But...Why would you offer to feed me? Sharing food has nothing to do with the rent?" Sherlock's face was blank and his tone had a bit of a bite. It held no aggression, but rather the cold calculation of his primary nature. John drew a shaking breath and clapped his hands on his thighs.

"Well, it's what people do. When they share the rent together. It's sort of like a gesture of goodwill between neighbors." John laid a hand on Sherlock's shoulder. Sherlock nodded, and then cleared his throat.

"Well, Doctor Watson, while I can say that I am exceptionally flattered...You are aware that I am in the middle of a serious Global drugs bust investigation. One that makes me a particularly lethal person to show goodwill toward?" Sherlock tilted his head, almost sadly. John nodded and stepped closer. No, he hadn't known that.

"I think that's for me to decide, isn't it? It's not as though you can control people or their sentiments." John internally cringed. He was sounding so much like Sherlock, saying things that Sherlock had told him to get inside his head. Sherlock nodded.

"I rather like the way you think. Straight to the point. Well, you could pick up tea, perhaps. I've polished off the last of what was there…"Sherlock waved toward the counter. John swallowed.

"And nothing to eat then? Tea is a drink." John bit his lip, smiling. He was amused in the way that shattered him, soul and goodwill, all at once. Sherlock peered up from his research sheets again.

"Oh...Well, we've run out of crackers?" Sherlock nodded and smiled. John sighed inwardly.

"Alright, crackers. And I was...I thought I might bring up some fish and chips from that truck a few streets over. Would you...perhaps like an order of those?" John cleared his throat. Sherlock turned to look at him.

"That's...enormously kind of you? It perplexes me greatly." Sherlock spun himself and sat on his desk, folding his legs over and spreading a map on his lap.

"What? That I was kind to you? Well, I'm not quite that great of an ass, am I?" John chuckled, licking his lips. He folded his arms. Sherlock stared at him, a hand raised with a finger pointed skyward. He looked mortified.

"Oh...Oh, God. How would I have the slightest idea? Your character, your internal thoughts, I've no metric to deductively reason those. All manner of personal defaults are completely alien to me, good Doctor. I meant more or less kindness as a concept. Goodwill and all that. Truly unnerving. Sets my stomach to flutters." Sherlock opened a marker with a decided pop and started scribbling lines on the map. John realized that Sherlock was being more vulnerable than he'd ever been because he didn't know to be guarded. John was his only relation to the entire social world and John was not someone that he knew at all.

"Well, it shouldn't be hard, should it? You should learn that not everyone, maybe most of the people you encounter, but not everyone wants to cause you harm, mm?" John nodded, feeling dizzy. Sherlock sighed.

"Sir, I've learned that if there is not an unfortunate anchoring circumstance to tie me to someone, they will quickly find a way to sever relation to me. If I am not an absolute necessary asset to an investigation or the intended victim of terrorism, then I am nobody…" Sherlock paused, puzzling with wide fluttering eyes. Then he looked up at John.

"So, perhaps you are one of the spies a certain Mycroft Holmes sets over me. I cannot remember my relationship to him, but he is adamant I am contained and "looked after" as he calls it. Or perhaps your neighborly kindness stems from curiosity to the mission I am on-which I cannot divulge, I fear. Maybe it is none of the above and you have a strange pension for merciful behavior. Of all those things I can perceive, I cannot understand human kindness sans agenda. But, I would appreciate the chips." Sherlock smiled and turned away. John stood listlessly behind him. His sudden revelations had given him a renewed sense of fear.

"Alright, well, you are right far from the mark of my intentions. Not to worry. Your mistrust doesn't bother me. I'll be back in an hour or so." John slipped on his coat.

He paused at the door, staring in awe at Sherlock. Sherlock who fumbled among all the many pages and photos of his progressed research. He was becoming more and more agitated, a vengeful ghost captured like poorly developed film in the echoing quiet of this room.

 _It's odd to love a stranger. But brother...I swear I care for you more than I do myself._


	9. Make it Rain

**Make It Rain~**

 **This chapter is based on Ed Sheeran's version of Foy Vance's "Make it Rain".**

It was the unhappiest of those existential mistakes that led to this moment. John had stepped out of Baker Street for an hour, no more. He had gone to gather something for Sherlock to eat. His heart had been only fixed on good. Yet Sherlock had been right as often he was. Goodwill was fatal in the end.

The blaze reached the skyline. Helicopters were swarming like vultures over the funeral pyre. Mrs. Hudson knelt on the sidewalk, smeared in ashes, like a mourner of the ancient world. She shrieked again and again, a keening wail that withered the soul of everyone standing within 100 yards of her.

It took John a moment of breathless trepidation to realize that she was screaming a name. His name. _Sherlock's_ name.

Yet Sherlock, forgetful as he was, no longer knew to come to it. He had lost his name, his heart, his soul, his will to fight. He was consumed in flame. The ashes and the glass rained down, echoing with the desolation. Smoke and smog rolled over the street, the cloaks of Death swept over.

John hit his knees, drawing his arms around Mrs. Hudson for a moment as the smog rolled over. It was the ghost of the ocean. It swallowed his soul and ached in his throat. And he hears the old cry of his heart. _He's gone, He's gone, He's gone._

Paramedics tore Mrs. Hudson away from John. They left him there. Cruel as a world with a vacancy for God. They left John there, with the cry twisting aimless in his throat. They left him there with the halo of his question hanging over his head. This wreath in the heady smoke, making him sick. John screamed then. He too was forgetting. For it was his name. Sherlock's name.

There was a movement at the top of the house. A figure in Baker Street's fire bleeding window. Water dripped as it spilled. Someone had ripped the pipes out of the sink, in one last gasping attempt to flood the house.

The image was flipped in John Watson's vision. Once this image had been finality. Sherlock running to the edge of a building. Sherlock falling, tumbling, coat ablaze. He was like a falling star, streaming on his way to the ground.

Thank God, he didn't have far to fall this time.

"Sherlock! God! Sherlock!" John's voice was almost gone. He shoved and swam through listless people, knocking them away like reeds before the Nile. He made his way to the epicenter where Sherlock thrashed, clothes on fire. Others feared to go near him. Someone screamed.

John dove on his friend. Bare-handed he ripped him out of his coat and tossed it away. With a gasp of pain, Sherlock collapsed to his knees. He'd injured his legs on his fall, but he hadn't fallen from a fatal ledge this time.

John knelt on the ground, holding Sherlock's bleeding form up, checking him for injuries a dozen times. Sherlock's eyes were wide, even as he panted and gasped. He seemed truly terrified in the raw at this moment. Not so much by the fear of falling, by the painful human torch he had assumed. His terror was the man who saved him. John swooping in like the battle field's eagle. It had unnerved him, this kindness, that was clearly sans agenda. Something he could try a thousand times to understand, but would always turn up short.

An hour out of mind passed. John, Sherlock and Mrs. Hudson were gathered on the back of a firetruck. No one came to see them. The crowds had fallen away. Law enforcement had receded from the scene, causing the street front to fold on its ends like a lily split nearest the stem.

"Oh...Our home. Clean gone." Mrs. Hudson sniffled into a hankie again. Her eyes flickered in the awestruck candlelight. This Guy Fawkes that burned without cause against the English skyline. Sherlock looked wistfully at it, unaware that Baker Street had been their home. Forgetful of everything but the desperation in John's voice when he'd been throwing his life away to save him.

"No…"John wrapped an arm around Mrs. Hudson. The other he wrapped around Sherlock.

"No, our home was...Was always here with us. We'll be alright, yeah? We have no choice." John smiled at Sherlock.

"Doctor Watson...A word." Sherlock stood up. He looked at Mrs. Hudson who smiled, comforted if only in the slightest by John's remark.

Sherlock and John took two steps away from the matriarch of their now homeless clan. The fire of their former sanctuary ragged behind them, searing their skin, afflicting their souls though they durst not look. The ground between them thirsts for that departed shelter. Sherlock licked his lips.

"I...I feel that I have brought this danger on you. All of my notes, save for this, they are gone up in the smoke." Sherlock plucked a syringe filled with a clear liquid out of his pant's pocket. John swallowed and took it in his hands. Sherlock's face was grave. John looked up, slow and cautious. He knew which part came next.

Sherlock's eyes were misting up. His fist opened and closed.

"I...I know you, don't I?" His face was practiced as if he'd been dying to ask this question.

"Yes…"John smiled, attempting to keep his level composure although he felt gutted at this moment. Sherlock nodded, unclenching his fist.

"I know...It's just. That thing you did back there. When you...When you helped me. That was...It was good. It was like you...In your eyes. I didn't reason it out at all, what I saw there. You...You helped me. Why else unless you knew me?" Sherlock was frantic, icy expression cracking into splinters of emotion. John took his shoulders.

"I do...I did." John laughed. Sherlock was near fainting. He swallowed.

"I...I am sorry that I...That I brought you pain. Take the lady...Find a shelter. You may be able to move into a hostel for the night if you call my superior. I don't...His name...I don't…"Sherlock scrambled through his pockets. John knew, of course, that Sherlock meant Mycroft.

"Hey, it's okay. We're going to be okay." John had a sinking feeling that he and Sherlock (he'd not allow it to happen to Mrs. Hudson) were bound for London's tent cities now. He took Sherlock's wrists. Sherlock smiled, sheepishly.

"No, we're not." Sherlock looked back sadly at the blazes. A loud crashing sound and a sliding, exploding piano told them the foundations of their home were peeling off and rolling into Hell. John nodded.

"No...But...We'll be okay being 'not okay' together. You and me...Just the two of us against the world. Mrs. Hudson...I'll phone her sister. Get her safely out of the middle of your dangerous case. And then I think you and I might try the bum life for a bit. Keep us off the radar of whoever did this. Maybe they'll all think that we're dead, mm?" John smiled at Sherlock. Sherlock's mouth was hanging open. He shook his head, teeth closing with a click.

"Two of us?" It was a foreign concept.

"Hey...I'll explain later. Come here, mate." John held his arms out and pulled Sherlock tightly to himself before the younger man could protest. Sherlock, to John's amazement, allowed himself to be held with eagerness.

"You...you saved me." Sherlock was stunned.

John watched Baker Street burn to its bricks and black out the sidewalk. He leaned into Sherlock's shoulder, breathing in the burned fabric that meant he'd nearly lost him a second time.

"Mm? Oh, yeah, of course. Of course, I did. Shh…" John held his breath, feeling Sherlock's trembling as the world crashed down and rained ashes on them. He didn't have the energy to grieve for Sherlock's lost mind or their lost home now. That would come with the following days. At this moment, the only strength he had was basking in the glow of the blazes and holding the one who had sacrificed body and soul so that he could be here today. Weary of life, but alive.

He was still alive.


	10. Under the Bridge

**Under the Bridge**

The rain. It was pummeling. A row between the gods. John held his breath, shivering under the tarp. He had nailed it to the edge of the bridge three times already and every time it was peeled away unceremoniously.

Sherlock continued working, unphased. This amazed John. They'd been living on the streets for over a week now. Sherlock was as well-adjusted as if they were living in a somewhere Hilton. He moved through the steaming rain that was washing all his casework drawn in chalk down from the bridge's concrete walls. He had covered the chalk by stuffing it in plastic bottles.

All at once the rain stopped. Sherlock peered up through ink-splatter wet hair. The sun was hiding like a bride behind that pale cloud. Yet hope came with that white rush of light. They may well dry out before the night.

"How's that for a tramp's wash, John?" Sherlock turned to smile at John. He startled, feeling like the wind was knocked out of him.

"My name...You used...My name?" John smiled. Did this mean?

"I am detoxing again. It's unfortunate...I am completely out of the serum. Now I am cut off from what I had. It went up in the flames…"Sherlock smiled sheepishly at John. John got up, casting off the newspapers he'd clothed himself in to retain some sense of dryness. He smiled, and then he laughed softly.

"You...So, you remember me now? As in, you remember everything?" John tilted his head. Sherlock's face was drained of the scarce color it had before. He nodded.

"I...ah...I remember that you are my first and truly greatest friend. Honestly, you are my...um...you were my only friend." Sherlock shuddered and looked back at the wall that was dripping with the chalky smear that had been his case notes. He sagged visibly, bone-weary from this intensive puzzle and a life spent on the street.

"I don't see how you can continue as my friend...I have wronged you greatly. Using the drug from the Baskerville case, I made you believe I had died before your eyes. Tricking you like that, leaving you behind...Leading you like a lamb to slaughter now, when I swore on pain of death to keep you safe from me." Sherlock turned to face John, face pinched with horror. John had shoved his fist to his heart, dumbstruck by this analogy of a sacrificial death.

"Safe...from you? Do you...You may not remember everything clearly? No, that's...That's mad, what you just said. That's not how it works." John stumbled closer and seized Sherlock by the forearms to keep him from turning away again.

"This case...You've been using that godawful stuff the entire time. This isn't the first you've been on the streets since you've been back, you know." John swallowed a ball in his throat at the guilt-ridden expression on Sherlock's face. Now John had come down wonderfully just like him. They were out here in the muddy rabble together.

"You've been tortured...Recently. I was there. You don't know that? I was there and I'm still here…I've seen your tapes. Handed over some of them to Mycroft even." John cleared his throat. Sherlock grinned, drawn again into the game that was his life's raw passion.

"Those tapes were all decoys, a rabbit trail for Myc to lead the police force down. I wanted them to have a mock case to go after, a plethora of dead hull drug dens of Moriarty's former network to expose. The real case...It's all in here. I will live and die with it. I mean to be the only casualty." Sherlock swallowed as he laid a shaking finger on his temple. John felt the breath rushing out of him.

"Why does anybody have to die?" John was getting emotional. Sherlock took him by either side of his face. John was stunned now. The intense focus in Sherlock's eyes. The familiar way he spun him in a circle as he demanded that he think. He spouted off an incessant and unintelligible string of rapid deduction. John didn't hear a word of what he was saying now. This was a carbon copy from memory. All of this. This action. This was the first time that he was reunited with Sherlock as his living friend. Not his ghost. Not the stranger…

"I'm sorry. I'm not following. All of this. Your death and life and sacrifice, it's a bit too bloody much for me!" John shoved Sherlock off of him and stared at him, teeth barred in terrible pain. Sherlock's sadness increased by powers of 100. He opened his mouth as if to keep speaking, but then he closed it again. Thought better of his deductions. Thought to appeal to John directly.

"I never had anyone to lose prior to...To meeting you." Sherlock weighed his speech carefully. How he struggled with openness. John nodded, chewing his lips.

"I didn't either. Yet I did lose you. Alright? I can't...I understand what you've been doing. All of it to keep me from ever having to know what their labs are like… I can't say-" John, an Army Doctor, a man who had lived through a war and kept a straight face the entire while was reduced to tears. Tears at the thought of what had been done to Sherlock to keep him off Moriarty's rack. Sherlock looked as if he'd been electrocuted. John nodded, holding up a hand.

"Damn it! You've turned my bloody head into a fountain, you have. Sherlock, I know why you did...What you did. But I can't...You can't ask me to let you. Now that I know. You can't expect...It doesn't work that way!" John's voice was breaking. Sherlock shook his head, mouth opening and closing in bewilderment.

"How do you not see it, John? You are far cleverer than you give yourself credit. I am not a man that anyone will miss. My family barely knew me when I was with them. Only the idea of me as younger, troublesome kin. I have no one else. Truly, no one that could be bothered with my second passing...You on the other hand. You are a man of great stature. Someone with so much luminosity that you could attract an entire village of friend and colleagues if circumstances would permit. Someone I've looked up to until my eyes were rolling for it." Sherlock let out an exhausted huff. John was sputtering.

"What are you talking about? You looking up to me?! You've had me looking up all the way to St. Bart's roof to you!" John dabbed furiously at his tears. Sherlock was getting visibly upset now too, struggling to breathe. That made this infinitely worse.

"John...Honestly. I know me. I had forgotten but I remember it now. O, wretched man that I am, how on earth? Someone like you. It's unbelievable. Certainly not something I'd have solved toward. But here you are. And, by God, it was my job at that point. Heaven granting me an Eternity of mercies by the chance to make your acquaintance. I couldn't just piss it all away, could I? My God! Perish the bloody thought of that!" Sherlock was shaking now, hands folded in front of him, prayerfully.

"I had a duty to you. The price of admission to a life as miraculous as yours...If it was blood, paying it was the only way to guarantee it was valued well enough. That I respected it for what it was." Sherlock traced his fingers over his throat. It was getting hot now that the sun burned above them, as the cloud opened for a brief instant.

"Dear God, Sherlock…"John bowed his head. Sherlock caught him as they both dizzily stumbled again to the wall of the bridge.

An hour or so went by before either one could speak again.

"You know, I never really slept rough before...It's not all bad." John kicked at a piece of chalk Sherlock had dropped. Sherlock cleared his throat.

"Someday you will have a life again." Sherlock smiled. He straightened himself to sitting upright and turned to face his friend. John eased himself up more, squared his jaw.

"Yes. With you. You will be there too, damn it. Don't try to get out of it. I won't let you die for me again, Sherlock. Two years' worth of that is quite enough." John gripped Sherlock's shoulder and gave him a shake. Sherlock smiled, putting aside the argument.

"Well, I suppose I'll have to fill you in a bit if you're going to be staying around." Sherlock shuttered. He hopped to his feet and held a hand out for John.

"I know somewhere that we can dry out and I can diagram this for you. Also, if it doesn't bother you, they have fresh food in their bins. It's almost as nice as ordering it." Sherlock's lopsided grin would have been comical on another day. John allowed himself to be hauled to his feet.

"Better fresh food from a rubbish bin with a dear friend, than a gourmet restaurant alone." John chuckled. Sherlock tilted his head.

"Oh, sentiment? Right. Okay. If you say so. Still, rubbish is rubbish, John. Some smells and tastes a bit nicer, though. See for yourself...Come on." Sherlock nodded over his shoulder, darting around the corner in his sudden eagerness.

"And we're off. You're back, finally. The game is afoot again." John grinned as he whispered this acknowledgment to himself. His stomach growled, hunger for the chase at the heels of his best and brightest man exceeding the hunger and pain of this failing life.


	11. A Tramp's Tea Time

**A Tramp's Tea Time**

John was drunk on happiness at the moment they had found the place. Sherlock's voice droned in its chatter behind him, smoke to the beehive of John's troubled mind.

"Godless...Superfluity of the rich. In a strange instance of paradox, this outdoor cafe or lady's club rather became a great kindness to the citizens of London's streets. And at that moment, godlessness served charity. Who'd have ever known? Aha!" Sherlock was deducing the little pavilion. Pulling things from thin air that John would never have thought to look for.

"An influential lady in Parliament leaves a case of expensive tea at her hideaway. Then, she forgets it and buys three more. So, she leaves this one to rust openly in the rafters. Thinking that the park patrol may clean it up. Only I found it the first time of late I was compelled to kip nearest the sparrows." Sherlock indicated upward. John followed his pointer finger and gasped.

"Oh! There, of course! Wizard!" John had the hope of a dry shelter now. The rafters of this park pavilion bowed in like a cradle. Sherlock had mapped a careful climb upward to that place. He'd marked the places safe for a foothold with chalk lines.

"You needn't have a blanket there in summer. It's mostly sheltered from the wind." Sherlock grinned sidelong at John. John held his breath. The recognition in his friend's eyes overpowered him now. He was succumbing to the spell that was the Sherlockian Game. The game was afoot and that was thrilling on its own. Yet the grave had surrendered the man. Now, with eyes tempered by death's strange cold fire, Sherlock's gift came back with ultra-force.

"And the bins...They come here in the evenings when the bakeries are closing. Final batch for the day. Wonder it is, but they ask for it so they can feed the sparrows. They amuse themselves with the feast of little birds. Meanwhile, dying humanity goes on about dying. Except for the sharp-eyed and the clever, like you and I." Sherlock reached into the trash. He dug around for only a moment before he found 3 loaves of french bread, wrapped neatly in paper. John's jaw dropped. Sherlock had timed this so precisely that steam was still coming from the ends of the paper.

"The only trouble's the water for tea. Not to worry, there's a public fountain and a regular rubbish bin for that." Sherlock snapped his fingers and pulled out a cigarette lighter from the pocket of his dirty blazer. John stared in wonder as Sherlock carefully unfolded the paper wrappers from the bread. He left a sleeve to protect said bread. Laid that on the table. Then, he wadded the rest into tight snowball compacts. He flipped the bin's lid over and laid the paper balls in it.

Taking the tea tin to the water fountain, Sherlock took the bags out and filled the tin with water. Then, he placed two of the tea bags back into the water, pocketing the rest for now. Then, he set the tin on top of the paper balls in the rubbish lid. Finally, he lit the paper balls on fire.

"You're making two cuppas in a rubbish bin. If that isn't a British tramp, I don't care to ask who is." John sat down at the pavilion table. Sherlock smiled at him. He then reached into another rubbish bin and pulled out newspapers, adding them to the fire. It would need to burn long enough to warm the tea at least to room temperature.

"Trouble is the cup. No fine china out here, John." Sherlock made a face. What would they use for a container?

"Oh, well, that's alright. Maybe you can use the tin it came in and I can use this." John had spied a soft drink bottle in the rubbish. Sherlock raised a brow as John cut it in half and then washed it in the water fountain.

"Making a teacup out of rubbish. Oh, but if that's not a British tramp…"Sherlock smirked.

"Now if we had some biscuits, eh? A proper tramp's tea time, that. " John had found another tin now with fancy biscuits under one of the tables. It had been discarded by the lady's club and their disinterested cleaning crew. Sherlock sniffed a sharp laugh.

"Human waste and charity...What a strange correlation that. The world's wound salve comes from the complete lack of attention that people pay others. A paradox that causes even my head to throb with wonder." Sherlock rubbed his eyes. John smiled.

"Ah, yes, and that's your modest take on it." John laughed and opened the biscuits. They were mostly broken, but unspoiled. John sat down, folded his legs and hands. Prayed over their honest meal for a second.

"Thank you, God, that we lived. Amen." John nodded. Sherlock ripped up the paper in the biscuit tin and added that to the tea fire. Sherlock nodded.

"And that we are alive for now." Sherlock sat near John watching the paper pieces smolder. The tea would not boil all the way, but that was alright. Sherlock tilted his head to the side and sniffed.

"Oi! The tin has some ultra-expensive labeling as that is a House of Lord's tailored brand. Yet the blend is the exact same spice as Taylors of Harrogate." Sherlock turned to John with a grimace of extreme consternation. John laughed into both fists until he was certain he'd turned blue. Sherlock tapped the table, bored.

"Alive...For now. Right. So, now that you remember are you going to tell me what all of this has been about?" John cleared his throat. He knew to approach this carefully. Sherlock looked up eyes a shock of lightning in their pain.

"I...well…" Sherlock swallowed, blinking.

"I know, I should. It's just...There is so much of it that is a bit beyond horrifying. Are you certain that…? I mean, I'd not have forgiven me for what I did." Sherlock gritted his teeth. John took him by his collar.

"I'm ready. You might not be, but I am. I forgive you. That's the end of it. We need never speak of it again." John grinned. Sherlock was royally confused.

"Really? Only just...Only just, um. Like that?" Sherlock shook his head.

"Yes...That's what friends do. Friends, remember? We are starting over again." John eyed the bread greedily. Sherlock looked at it and sighed with a weariness that made one believe he was a few centuries older than God.

"I said I would and so I will. But, the story is bloody...And it isn't only mine. I've spilled some. Some was spilled without my help. It's all been an ugly affair, no strategy no purpose…" Sherlock shuttered and shook himself.

"Ah, well. War is that way." John nodded. Sherlock met his gaze.

"What? Oh, right? Of course...What was I thinking all this time? Of course, you would understand. Of course…"Sherlock's voice dropped to a whisper. John smiled. A bit of steam came rolling over the top of the tea.

"Right. Well, tell it all then. Here, I've got the tea." John hopped up and snapped his fingers. Sherlock watched him milling around the pavilion as if this was their kitchen on Baker Street all those years ago before the flame erased their lives. Finally, he clapped his hands on the table, and began thus:

"It happened like this. On the evening of that day that we went our separate ways. I to my grave and you to your grief…"


	12. S'Fagaim Mo Bhaile

**S'Fagaim Mo Bhaile (And I leave my home)**

 _This chapter is named after a song by Enya. The lyrics and the music were the inspiration for this part._

Sherlock's head was bowed as he began his story. Most of which is censored here, for the fear it would instill. John gripped the makeshift teacup til his hands were sore, the white retained in his knuckles. Sherlock's eyes were misting with bloodshot, but his face was a mask of grim resolve.

"Moriarty made his fortune on creative drug labs. The first person who forcibly addicted me to drugs as a teenager was one of his consorts. That was the first tip I ever received on a painfully long and dark path that led to the Spider's Hell." Sherlock was jarred when John tapped the top of his shaking hand.

"You mean...The first time...You were forced to try them?" John tilted his head. Sherlock smiled.

"Well, the first time, I was only a boy. An early intellectual bloomer, as it would turn out. I was at Uni before any of my contemporaries were ready to graduate college. And, well, the first time I was jumped in a library and drugged with an inhalant in a rag. As a joke. But I never have been able to match that high in all my recreations. It was only in the Purgatory of my exile that I learned the origin of my addiction came from him. The Consulting Criminal had me eating from his hand at the outset…" Sherlock's eyes looked to the West. The sky was auburn under the wake of relenting rain.

John followed his eyes. Held his breath. He knew that Sherlock was contemplating his native country again. He had never hoped to return here. If he ever had, he had hoped it would be under better circumstances. Now he was a ghost to its streets.

"The night that I "died" to you, I was shipped instead to Ireland. I had sustained severe injuries in a fight with Moriarty that ended in his death. I was treated at an underground hospital for the Irish Liberation Army and then…"Sherlock's face took a shade of grey that reflected the sky. The sorrow in his eyes was like frozen tears.

John nodded. He understood that this was going to be bad.

"I had a USB drive...I had the last confessions of Moriarty. A list of puzzles he wanted to be solved as his sort of criminal Manifesto that I would present to the world. All of these were essentially road mapping the path of his fortune. A fortune made on guerilla pharmaceuticals. He was...He was creating drugs of raw insanity so that he could tip the scales of modern conflict any way he pleased. Then, he bought the factories and companies that were manufacturing modern warfare. It was his hope to generate a third world war. It began with his birthplace and it ended in Afghanistan. That was because he had a specific thread woven into his machine. One that spelled out your name and put you in immediate danger if I failed to solve his last greatest...bloodiest puzzle."Sherlock ducked his chin. A soft rain began to fall as the sun went down.

"We don't...We don't have to tell the whole story now." John nodded. Sherlock lifted his face. His eyes were trying to twist shut, burning in the dying light like the embers of cold stars.

"I may never be able to tell that part, John. I was...I was kept in a sort of slaughterhouse. A puzzle trap that was the physical manifestation of all his thoughts. It was meant for you. All of it was meant for you and if I think...What may have happened to you." Sherlock bowed his head.

John then had a mortifying realization. One that hit him harder than grapeshot hurled from a cannon. Sherlock was only so traumatized by his torment because it had been meant for John himself.

John leaned back, growing silent. He felt his face go numb. The wind was knocked out of him as if someone took a crowbar to his shoulders.

Sherlock cautiously sipped the last of the tea from the tin. He drew a shaky breath as the park was plunged into darkness. Then, lighting the cigarette lighter, he pointed up.

"To the nest, eh? There's room enough to kip two with room to spare. It is warm enough to do without but I think I may have left two blankets up there as well." Sherlock cleared his strangulated throat and climbed atop the table. After a moment of struggle, he ascended into the rafters.

Dear God...Now I have to know the truth...John nearly passed out. Sherlock reached down his blazer jacket to help John get a leg up and then he scrambled to the footholds Sherlock made. A moment later, Sherlock tucked his body into the wall's shoulder. He was fast asleep before he could ask any more questions.

John tucked up against the other shoulder of the wall, here in this rafter's nest. He watched Sherlock in amazement until he too fell asleep.


End file.
